Worry
by Fading Grace
Summary: Akito and Yuki, when they're about ten, spend the day apart. A complete twoshot, a study of the influence that Akito holds over Yuki.
1. Yuki

This is a two-shot. Please read both chapters in a row before reviewing... Except Adi88, because this is a sort of make-up-for-leaving-unexpectedly present, and she _will_ review both. Please.

* * *

I felt the mattress shift under me and opened my eyes. In the dim light I could barely make out the black-on-black shape of Akito walking away. It couldn't have been later than four in the morning. 

I didn't think about why Akito was leaving without even a light on. I was sure that the aunties who got us everything we needed would be panicking by the time he was found missing.

I pulled the blankets closed and slept

* * *

I woke up in silence, with sunlight lazily filling our bedroom. Slowly, I sat up and folded back the quilt. 

I blinked.

Something was different.

That was as far as I got. I stood and found clothes that Akito would like on me and went down the hallway to the bathroom for a shower.

The cold water hit me and I turned the knob counter-clockwise until my skin was nearly scalded and the steam billowed around me. Something was different. The shower was roomier than usual.

Oh.

Where had Akito gone, so early in the morning?

I sighed and washed my hair. If the aunties hadn't panicked, then he was around somewhere and planning to surprise me. Probably at breakfast, waiting forever and ever for me to wake up and come down to see.

What did he expect? I couldn't wake up before ten if he wasn't around. And I knew for a fact that Akito didn't wake up before nine unless he was feeling ill or an auntie woke him up for a meeting.

…I knew, though. He expected me to be his perfect Rat.

I coughed, and turned the hot water off to get rid of the steam. Hatori had warned me not to take hot showers for any length of time. I settled for tepid.

When I was younger, I had always turned the water all the way to cold and said things like a Shinto priest. I pretended that I was performing a purification ceremony. I was soon to be in the presence of God, after all.

I was no longer a child.

I turned the water all the way to cold, and began to murmur.

When I was done, I shut off the water and stepped out, pulling a towel off the rack. I carefully left my hair wet, though, because Akito liked to have evidence that I was clean. I dressed in the clothes I had gathered and went to the room where Akito and I ate our meals.

Akito wasn't there.

I sat, uneasily, and looked at the meal before me. Half a grapefruit with sugar to put on top, a sort of flavored oatmeal, and the special vitamin C drink that Hatori told me to drink every day.

It was the breakfast I always ate. Akito always had a huge platter of different dishes served, so that he could pick whatever he wanted at the moment…which changed every five seconds.

I ate in silence, and then sat in silence after that.

Akito didn't come through the door.

I went into the room where we spent our mornings playing. Without Akito to demand that we play with this toy or that, I only sat there and stared at all of them before finding my schoolwork to get done.

By the time my work was done, it was time for lunch. I went carefully, trying to keep my face blank and my posture perfect, because Akito would be waiting for me in the dining room this time for sure.

But when I went in, he wasn't there. My face fell and I slouched to the table to eat my salad and half a turkey sandwich.

When it was time for the tutor, I picked up my school things and ran to the tutor's special room. This man was a Sohma, but only vaguely. He didn't know about the Zodiac, just that Akito and I were too ill to go to normal school.

He sat in his room today and smiled up at me when I came in. "Oh, Yuki-kun, it's nice to see you. Where is Akito-san?"

I stopped my hard breathing and arranged the blank face that Akito liked me to wear. "I don't know, Sensei. I thought that he might be here with you."

"No, he's not. Well, he often can't join us, isn't that so?"

I nodded. The days when Akito was sick, he wouldn't come.

Sensei said, "We'll just have our lesson, Yuki-kun. Did you have any questions about the history assignment? Not that I expect you to."

"No, Sensei," I said, and sat, always looking at the door.

It was a long lesson.

* * *

I am sitting in the playroom again, writing this, because there's nothing else to do. 

Where is Akito? Why hasn't he come?

I can't let myself think that something awful happened because Akito isn't here. He's been ill before, and isolated from me. But, those times, all of the aunties would be worried about him, and I would be worried with them. And he definitely isn't... worse than ill, because then the aunties would be in an _uproar_.

Where is he?

* * *

It's night, now. I was interrupted. Akito just came walking through the door, as though nothing was wrong! He is frustrating, sometimes, because anything he does affects me and I don't think he knows it. 

But he came in with such an angelic expression that I stared at him and began to cry. I sat by the window and demanded that he tell me where he was, but I was still crying and he just came and held me and didn't even say.

I'm very tired.

I wish, sometimes, that Akito didn't hold so much power over me... but then, immediately, inequivocably, I don't.


	2. Akito

I became aware of my nausea and the world at the same time.

The sun was long gone. The dark was gathering in the east, as it does just before dawn.

I slowly untangled my fingers from my Yuki's shirt and folded the blankets back. I moved my legs out and down to sit up, and then stood and left the bed we shared behind.

Even in the dark I was sure of my footing. Ten steps to the door. Open it, and it was twenty steps to the right to get to the bathroom. That was my first stop.

When I was done, I rinsed my mouth out with the tap and continued my exploration of the Main House by Braille.

Down the hallway to the right and, at the end, a left. My fingers found thin, fragile wood and rice paper stretched thin. This was the screen door to Hatori's room. I opened it and stepped inside.

The heat hit me like a wall. I could never understand Hatori's love of heat. Yuki and I slept in the same bed without any heaters, even now, in the wintertime. Besides, humidity hurt Yuki's chest or whatever was wrong with him.

The heat was making it hard to think. I moved into the adjoining room and found the bed, but all I had the engery to do was climb into it. If I snuggled with him long enough, he would be warm and turn off that oppressive heater.

Yes. My logic was flawless.

I closed my eyes.

* * *

I woke up on an examination table with a paper-thin gown on. I sat up, decided that I didn't want to, and lay back to let the waves of nausea and vertigo pass me by. 

Above me, Hatori said, "You had another attack." He paused, and I swallowed air to keep from experiencing my dinner a third time. He scolded, "Breathe normally."

I breathed normally, put out my right hand, and vomitted into the bucket he handed me. When I was finished, he took the bucket away and wiped my mouth. A minty salve was smeared beneath my nose. Apparently, taste was tied to smell, and I would throw up again if I tried to eat anything so the mint helped ease the sour taste.

He said, "The attacks are becoming more frequent."

"They're always becoming more frequent," I gasped. "It's too hot in here."

He lifted me and sat me in a chair facing an open door that was letting in a snowy breeze. I ignored the vertigo, and the nausea became lost as the mint dissolved my sinuses.

Hatori moved to stand before his heater, pulling his coat closed. I said, "You look as though you're trying to melt."

"There is an open door and snow outside, Akito. The heater is justified."

"I would have expected you and snow to get along just fine."

He ignored me. "It's noon. Yuki should be at lunch, and lessons are next."

"No lessons for me," I said with certainty. It was always at least an hour after an injection before I could walk, let alone think in numbers. "My Yuki always comes to check on me when I'm ill. Why isn't he here?"

"I told the maids that you were here. They wouldn't have told him, and he wouldn't have asked."

That was true. Yuki's timid anxiety was one of the cutest things about him, as long as he wasn't worrying about that constant, annoying cough. I said, "Then... don't tell him. He'll have to ask eventually."

Hatori said, "Yes, Akito." He closed the door and, in compensation, turned off the heater.

I couldn't feel my skin enough to care. "He can't function without me, you know."

"Yes, Akito. I know."

I nodded, and settled down in my chair to wait.

* * *

After I tried and failed to eat a midafternoon meal, I decided that enough time had passed and Yuki should have asked about me by now. I went to check on him, peeking in through a crack in the door only a few centimeters wide. 

He was in the playroom where we usually spent our mornings, on my good days. There was a hard binder on his lap, and he was writing on the piece of paper on top of it. Probably doing the homework from the lesson. Later, if I felt generous, I would allow him to do mine, as well. He needed extra practice, to do his very best. And he learned by teaching others, something that I had never understood.

But now he was just sitting there. He wasn't worried. He didn't blink, he was so focused.

I felt the familiar flame of anger. My Yuki didn't care. _My Yuki_ didn't care whether I was with him or not.

He cared more about that stupid piece of homework than he did about me!

What if I was dead, would he care then? He wouldn't even know, because he wouldn't _ask_ anyone where I had gone.

If _my Yuki_ didn't notice when I died, then who would? Hatori, maybe, because he would be the one doing the autopsy.

I imagined his scribbled doctor writing. _Cause of Death: Ceased to Exist_.

Here Lies Akito, We Barely Cared.

_And he wasn't even worried after I had disappeared all day!_

I watched as he set his pencil down and looked out the window. I watched as he slowly pressed his face into his hands.

This was _my Yuki_. My Yuki didn't show emotions, and I knew that. This display meant that he was practically tearing apart...

I felt a surge of forgiveness in me and walked through the door.

He looked up with wide eyes and stared at me as though I were a ghost.

"Akito-san!" he gasped, and the binder and paper slipped off his knees and hit the ground.

"My Yuki," I greeted him, and began to walk over. It was a slowly journey, because my joints were becoming achy and I had to pick my way through the toys on the ground.

He was crying. I didn't realize it until I got closer, but tears were streaming down his face and he was a lost little boy. He whimpered, "Akito-san, where _were_ you? All this time..."

I wrapped my arms around him and held him, feeling the shaking as he began to sob.

"All this time, and I hoped that you would show up like you always do, or Hatori-san would come get me to see you if you were ill, or the aunties would say something..."

"I'm here, my Yuki. Don't cry," I soothed.

But I didn't mean it. Every tear he cried was another day that I would be remembered after I died. I wanted him to keep crying forever.

But he is my Yuki. I _do_ have forever with him.

And I am glad.


End file.
